Electronics For Engineers Article - The artifacts in 3D Time-of-Flight: What are they and how to avoid them?

February 2026

Time-of-Flight (ToF) is an active 3D technology that calculates distance by measuring the time a light pulse, emitted by the camera, takes to return after being reflected off an object. Knowing this time and the speed of light, it is possible to calculate the distance traveled
by the light pulse, and therefore the distance of the object.

Compared to other 3D techniques, ToF has several advantages: it can work reliably in low-light conditions, with texture-less environments and the computational load required to calculate the distance image is low. Additionally, ToF is suitable for applications requiring real time decisions because of its very low latency. However, this technology can also suffer from artifacts, which need careful consideration in order to mitigate or even avoid them.

Click here to read the full article by Teledyne e2v's Yoann Lochardet.